Nurse Insights: What Are the Best Specialties for Travel Nurses?
While not for everyone, travel nursing can offer an exciting opportunity for nurses looking to explore different parts of the country, learn different customs and cultures, and see how other healthcare professionals provide patient care. However, having a specialty as a travel nurse can offer numerous advantages, making you more valuable to keep on staff. In this article, we will explore the best specialties for travel nurses and understand their demands, benefits, and the qualifications required. You will also gain insights into how choosing the right specialty can enhance your traveling nurse career.
Nurse Insights
What Are the Best Specialties for Travel Nurses?
In our Nurse Insights series, experienced nurses offer an insider’s perspective on the nursing profession by addressing common questions, challenges, and triumphs of their careers.
Understanding the Basics of Travel Nursing
Travel nursing involves taking temporary assignments, typically between 8-13 weeks at a time, in various healthcare settings across the country or even internationally. These assignments are meant to augment existing nursing staff, typically in high-need areas or hospital units.
Job Duties and Expectations
As a travel nurse, your duties aren’t vastly different from those of a typical nurse; providing direct patient care, administering medications, keeping patient records, and collaborating with medical professionals form the staples of your role. The primary difference comes from the transient nature of your assignment. You will need to adapt quickly to new settings, systems, and colleagues as you’ll be moving around often.
A level of flexibility is also required — travel contracts may specify shift patterns or require you to be available to work weekends, so being prepared for variable work hours is essential. The amount of adventure you get from this profession is bound to the strength of your adaptability.
Opportunities Presented by Travel Nursing
Travel nursing is attractive to many due to its unique blend of professional and personal opportunities.
From a professional standpoint, travel nursing enables you to diversify your skillset and experience. You can gain exposure to diverse health systems, patient populations, and medical practices, which can later enhance your competence as a nurse. By working in various types of healthcare facilities – from rural clinics to large city hospitals – you can widen your understanding of healthcare delivery and patient care strategies.
On a personal level, travel nursing means the chance to explore new cities, states, or countries on your work assignments. It presents the opportunity to see the world and immerse yourself in various cultures while maintaining a rewarding career.
Benefits of Being a Travel Nurse
Travel nursing can offer competitive pay rates, often higher than those provided to permanent staff due to the demand for these roles. They may also come with benefits such as housing stipends or travel allowances. The opportunity to choose your assignments allows you to balance your personal interests and your career growth effectively.
Overall, travel nursing is an excellent option if you love nursing and also have a burning desire to explore new places and experiences.
What is Specialty Travel Nursing?
Having a specialty as a travel nurse can offer numerous advantages, making you more valuable to keep on staff. Specialized nurses often command higher pay rates due to their unique expertise in a particular area of nursing.
Focus on Specific Patient Groups
For instance, such a specialization might be in pediatrics, oncology, critical care, or any other number of fields, meaning that you have in-depth knowledge and experience in these areas.
This allows you to focus on specific patient groups as you travel from one healthcare facility to another, providing targeted care that other nurses might not be qualified for.
Yet, this is different from general travel nursing in the amount of expertise needed and the level of responsibilities given.
Responsibilities and Expertise
As a general travel nurse, you might be responsible for a wide variety of patients and conditions, and while this can provide a broad base of experience, it might not offer the same depth that specializing does.
With a specialty, you carry a deep understanding of certain processes, diseases, treatments, and more. Therefore, you’re more likely to handle complex scenarios relevant to your specialty with greater competence.
Personal Satisfaction and Professional Recognition
In addition to the benefits for patients and healthcare facilities, having a specialty can also lead to greater personal satisfaction. It allows you to focus your learning and growth on a specific area of interest. Moreover, it can also lead to greater professional recognition from your peers.
Most In-Demand Specialties for Travel Nurses
Travel nursing is a dynamic field that sees fluctuations in demand depending on various healthcare needs, regions, and ongoing healthcare crises. You might wonder which specialties are sought after the most. Knowing this data provides a pathway to meet the needs and offers attractive working conditions and compensation.
High Demand Specialties
In travel nursing, these particular specialties consistently see high demand.
- Critical Care: With a rising population of critically ill patients, especially during unforeseen health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, critical care nurses are in high demand. These nurses work in Intensive Care Units (ICUs), caring for patients with life-threatening conditions.
- Emergency Room (ER) Nurses: As they tend to urgent cases, ER nurses are consistently needed in every hospital. They possess the skills to stabilize patients and collaborate with medical teams to quickly assess and address medical emergencies.
- Labor and Delivery (L&D) Nurses: These nurses assist with childbirth in both standard and emergency scenarios. The need for such specialized skills tends to remain constant.
- Operating Room (OR) Nurses: Nurses with experience in surgical procedures are always in high demand as surgeries continue to be routine practice in healthcare facilities.
- Telemetry Nurses: These professionals monitor patients’ vital signs and assess data to identify problems. With the advent of remote patient monitoring technologies, this specialty is seeing an increase in demand.
Why Are These Specialties In Demand?
Several reasons contribute to the high demand for these specialties:
- Intensity of Skills Required: Some specialties require unique, intense training and a high skill level. Naturally, nursing professionals with these specialized skills are more scarce, making them high in demand.
- Critical Scenarios: Many of these specialties directly address life-threatening conditions or urgent healthcare situations. The importance of these roles contributes to their high demand.
- Technology Advancements: Some roles, like telemetry nursing, are increasingly in demand due to the advent of new technologies, expanding the need for professionals who can work effectively with these tools.
- Short Staffing & High Turnover: Critical care environments often face high turnover rates, which consistently yields high demand for replacement staff. These environments face high turnover rates due to a number of reasons, including burnout, stress, and the demanding nature of the job.
Knowing which specialties are most sought-after can help guide your career decisions and possibly open up lucrative opportunities, especially for second-degree students considering nursing as a new career path.
Benefits of Choosing a Specialty in Travel Nursing
Choosing a specialty such as travel nursing offers several advantages. First, you have greater earning potential. Travel nurses typically earn more than their stationary counterparts, mainly due to the demand and short-term nature of assignments. Second, you have greater job security as travel nurses are always in high demand. Lastly, personal fulfillment is another reason many choose travel nursing as a specialty.
Increased Wages
The ability to travel and explore new locations is often taken into account when calculating your overall compensation package. Hourly pay, stipends for housing, and reimbursement for travel expenses can all add to an increased wage.
Job Security
Another benefit of choosing a specialized field like travel nursing is job security. Due to the ongoing nurse shortage, travel nurses are in high demand. Organizations frequently need to fill positions quickly, providing you with a plethora of opportunities across the United States and even internationally.
Personal Fulfillment
If you have a penchant for adventure and enjoy experiencing different cultures and work environments, choosing a specialty in travel nursing can be personally fulfilling. This career path allows you to share your skills across a variety of settings, meeting diverse groups of patients and colleagues along the way. Each new assignment presents opportunities for growth and learning, from new technologies to different patient care methods.
Travel Nursing Specialties with High Salary Potential
As a registered nurse, you may have interests that extend beyond general nursing. There are several specialties that pay more than others, generally based on your increased responsibilities.
Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs)
Registered nurses who specialize in anesthesia, often referred to as CRNAs, can earn significantly higher incomes than their counterparts in other specialties. This is primarily due to the complexity and critical nature of their work. CRNAs work with surgeons, anesthesiologists, dentists, and other healthcare professionals to provide anesthesia for surgical, obstetric, and trauma care.
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners
Likewise, psychiatric nurse practitioners also have a high earning potential. They diagnose mental health issues and prescribe medication, meaning they take on responsibilities similar to psychiatrists. Given the increasing awareness of mental health issues and relatively few professionals in the field, this high demand contributes to their robust salaries.
Pediatric Nurse Practitioners
Pediatric nurse practitioners specialize in the care of infants, children, and teens. These nurses need comprehensive knowledge of growth and development in order to accurately assess and treat their younger patients. The deep need for specialized pediatric care, especially in underserved areas, often reflects in their salary.
Orthopedic Nurse Practitioners
Orthopedic nurse practitioners focus on the musculoskeletal system, with responsibilities that include assisting with surgery, setting bones, and educating patients on musculoskeletal disease prevention. The high skill and knowledge level required for this role, along with the aging population increasingly in need of such care, makes this another high-paying specialty.
Keep in mind that earning potential can vary based on factors such as geography, experience, and education level. Additional certifications can also be beneficial in increasing your salary potential as a nurse.
How to Choose the Right Specialty for You
When choosing a nursing specialty, you’ll want to carefully consider your personal skills, unique interests, and long-term career goals.
Evaluate Your Skills
Begin by assessing the skills you’ve gained through your previous schooling, work experiences, and your nursing education. Identify your strengths and areas where you excel. For example, if you are good at problem-solving and can work in high-stress situations, you may be well-suited for critical care or emergency nursing. On the other hand, if patience and teaching are among your strengths, consider specialties like pediatric nursing or patient education. Remember that skills can be honed over time, so do not limit yourself solely based on current abilities.
Identify Your Interests
Interests play a big role in job satisfaction. Reflect on the patients or settings that inspire you. Note that your clinical rotations in nursing school are an excellent opportunity to discover what type of care truly interests you before deciding on a specialty. If you found yourself drawn to a particular area during rotations, this might be a good indication of where your interests lie.
Consider Your Career Goals
Finally, consider your long-term professional goals. Think about where you see yourself in the future: Do you have ambitions of participating in advanced research? Then potentially exploring a specialty like oncology could be rewarding. Do you plan to pursue a leadership or administrative role? If so, a specialty that provides a broad base of experience, such as medical-surgical nursing, could be beneficial.
Though choosing a specialty might seem daunting, remember that nursing is versatile, and it’s possible to switch specialties throughout your career. Take the time to do your research, gain exposure, and seek advice from seasoned nurses. Start with your skills, interests, and career goals as a guiding tool, but remain open to discovering new passions along the way.
